Category Archives: Scripts

Entertainment: Beyond “Happily Ever After”

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So I have been rather addicted to this series: “Once Upon a Time”. The irony is that although a fair number of my friends have insisted I should start watching it because it would be a series I would enjoy I made a point of not watching it for that same reason. Well that and the fact that I don’t always have the time to watch television shows anymore.

But then I started watching some time during the first half of Season Three when the characters went to Neverland and I was hooked (heh, Hook… Neverland… get it?). So I purchased the first two seasons of the series and got myself caught up and lo and behold I was definitely on the bandwagon.

I don’t know why I didn’t watch this series sooner… it took all the “happily ever afters” and turned them on their heads. It took all of the beloved fairytales and found ways to integrate them amongst one another from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty, from Pinocchio to Rumpelstiltskin, etc.

There were some ties in between various fairytales that were rather ingenious and inspiring that one can’t help but wonder why did it not happen before? I suppose in a lot of ways we’ll never know.

And now in the second half of the third season the core cast has been integrated with the Wicked Witch of the West… except that is the only integration. Oz appears primarily in flashbacks from the Wicked Witch’s point of view and Glinda the Good Witch makes a couple of appearances, but that’s about all. Which is too bad because I was hoping for some more…

Then again… this kind of popped up on my Facebook News Feed over a month ago. From the Disney ABC Careers, they are taking applications for writers on their current and / or new programs… Now isn’t this tempting.
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Reflection: From Words to Stage a Journey

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It’s a little bit funny… This feeling inside…

Playwright's FestivalStill trying to decipher it, but nonetheless there is something to be said about seeing something that one has nurtured from a speck of an idea in one’s imagination to words on paper. Then to trust another party to take those words that you have already cut up, broken, chopped, sewn together, simmer, percolate, etc until it is ripe for someone to then cast actors and have them act those same words out for others to see…

There is just something incredibly profound about the process and I had the chance to see that happen on stage last night during the tech rehearsal prior to opening weekend.

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Endeavors: Ten Minute Plays

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Why have I been busy? I’ve been writing… a lot of it.

But what exactly? Well that is a bit of a loaded question with a not so easy answer so I will try.

Over a year ago I was in rehearsals for a series of one-acts, one of those one-acts was Christopher Durang’s Kitty the Waitress. In his afterword this particular ten minute play was created with the intention of being one in a series of nine cat related plays… In his original intention the fifth life. So why not create something like that?

So where would I begin? Considering that I listen to music non-stop while working I decided to go with that and listen to songs and if inspiration strikes to quickly write ideas down before I forget them and move on. So if I were to do that what songs would I use? Early on, two songs whose story popped up rather quickly were:
1) Savage Garden’s Two Beds and a Coffee Machine
2) Celine Dion’s It’s All Coming Back to Me Now

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UPDATE: NaNoWriMo Day 21

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Wow, this was a rather strong writing day. Didn’t expect that. I kind of just sat down, reworked a few scenes, redistributed a bunch of lines and expanded on Scene Six. Now I am done with Scene Six and am looking into my research to see what I have to do next…

Total Word Count: 6,010

Yup, that is a pretty decent jump.

Granted I have been doing a little bit of editing other stuff… so really is this any surprise? I also added an Afterword to the script to gives additional information about inspiration and how the idea came about… which added to the over all word count.

When looking at the “research” for the series of vignettes… I ended up breaking down approximately how many other scenes I most likely have and I counted at minimum around eight and at most? Ha I don’t want to think about that yet… yeeeeaaaah I am not even halfway done. Go figure.

So what else do I have in the queue should I be so lucky as to finish writing the vignettes? Well there is the first ten-minute play formally named “Cycles”, I also have another ten-minute that is going to undergo heavy revisions if not a full out rewrite called “Moments”. Another script that needs to go through heavy revisions is based off of Ray Bradbury’s “The Rocket Man”.

Then of course there is the full show that I have to streamline called “Arrangements”… if I do this right I would be able to whittle the character list from ten to six and possibly even five… but I am unsure if I could even do that! Ugh.

Of course I have all these prose projects that have been on back burner… in the end I am just glad to have gotten started on anything at all… hopefully this motivation lasts into the next month or so. We’ll see.

UPDATE: NaNoWriMo Day 19

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So I finally got around to completing a couple more scenes from the series of vignettes stage play that I have been working on being my word total up to 5,019-ish… Well more or less. I am sure I am off by a few words give or take.

From here on out the series will be new material compiled from previous stories… And as thus a kind of “starting from fresh” kind of mentality. Not a bad thing mind you but it may or may not make plowing along easier.

But really…
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UPDATE: NaNoWriMo Days 18 and 19

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So during a rehearsal line read through over the weekend I went through a couple of ten minute plays of mine and reworked and continued to edit them. I have completed the editing process for one and once I have implemented the changes will go through it again one more time before sending it off to a couple of close friends for their opinions on the changes.

As for the other? Well it needs work. I like the concept and the idea and the whys, but since a lot of the dialogue is based off of conversations I had many moons ago what works in real life doesn’t necessarily work on stage. So I have two choices I could rework from the script what I want or I could scrap the whole thing and just start from scratch. Now that I have a better idea of what I want to do and how to shape it, the latter might be more to my liking, who knows.

What is on the agenda? Other than the above I still have the series of vignettes to continue working on. I am tempted to just go back and start formatting the sucker for my sanity and so others could start reading (or I could start editing) but I don’t know if that would help or hinder the process… Meh, does it really matter? I am getting stuff done… that’s all that counts. 😉

Overall I have gotten… or have been getting a lot more done editing-wise than I had initially anticipated, and it is a good feeling. Moreso now that I have a couple half an hour or so just sitting down and focusing on editing during rehearsals. Multi-tasking is a beautiful thing.

UPDATE NaNoWriMo Days 4 and 15

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Yup, you read that right… I didn’t do any writing between days 4 and 15… and it is rather depressing, but what can one do?

So why am I updating? Because I have managed to go through and reproduce three of the five scenes that I lost in the deletion of one script… so that word count is up to around 5,000… but not only that I started expanding and adding in pieces here and there to fill out the scenes already written.

Needless to say I am a bit excited because the next two scenes aren’t not aspects just thrown together, but rather actual events with lots of information that could stand alone. Once I have these last two scenes rewritten I would be golden and after that it is all new material… in the matter of speaking.

Take that a step further and I spent some time earlier today editing the first ten-minute play I ever wrote. I purposely placed the piece on back burner because I wanted a fair amount of time to pass before looking at it again and most likely heavily editing it. Which is what ended up happening.

I deleted a character… rearranged a few lines… changed the mentality of one of the characters so there is more of a punch / conflict and I am happy with what I have.

With some time over the weekend… in between everything else going on, mayhaps I will find time for additional writing?

UPDATE: NaNoWriMo Day 1 and Day 2

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As mentioned on my primary blog: Dancing Through the Universe… I am going to make an honest attempt to get something done during the month of November for NaNoWriMo. After all I have who knows how many projects in the pipeline that needs editing, reviewing, rewriting, etc?

So what did I decide to start on? A script… or more accurately a series of scenes (or vignettes as I would call them) that revolve around a singular theme. Unfortunately it is a script where I accidentally deleted the original digital copy of but still have a hard copy with a whole bunch of red-marks on it that I have yet to apply on the digital copy anyway. So I thought that it would be best to work on a script that I know what to expect, but am forced to redo from scratch.

Since this is a script… formatting on its own takes up a lot of time, so I am going to wait until NaNoWriMo is over before I actually go through the work and format it to the correct designations.

In the meantime I am just chugging along… but how did I do? Well Day One was a loss on so many levels.

As for Day Two, I actually got 824 words down during lunch time and then another 792 after I decided to stop working. Ironically enough, this is the completion of one scene or vignette in the series and as thus a decent breaking point.

Current word count: 1616

So what am I writing about?
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